When journalists write about churches in decline, we usually cite facts such as falling attendance and dwindling vocations to illustrate the trend. On a recent trip to the remote southern island of Ikitsuki to visit descendants of Japan’s Kakure Kirishitan (Hidden Christians), a Reuters team discovered a surprising new indicator with a fascinating story behind it. Apart from suffering from dwindling numbers, some congregations in this unique branch of Christianity no longer know how to baptise new members.

The secrecy and suspicion of outsiders that helped the Kakure Kirishitan preserve their rituals and traditions through centuries of suppression have also contributed to the loss of those rites. Their story is explained in my feature and the video below.

Yasutaka Toriyama, 68, the gobanyaku or head of a household that traditionally holds a group’s relics such as scrolls or medals, told us the rite of baptism had been lost to his own small group because the elder who conducted it died without passing on his knowledge.

Chatting over sake after completing the Christmas Eve prayers, Toriyama said years ago he had gone to the sazukeyaku — the elder who performs baptisms — of another group on the island and asked to be allowed to observe a baptism.

But he was turned away as an outsider.

“The words have been written down, but I don’t know the actions to go with them,” said Toriyama, whose own baptismal name is “Domingos”.

Younger islanders apparently have little interest in undergoing what scholars say was long a central rite of the religion, in part because baptism could be conducted without a priest. Another reason could be that the concept of purification resonated with the tenets of Japan’s indigenous Shinto religion.

Shigeo Nakazono, an enthologist who runs the island’s small museum on the island and has studied the Hidden Christians, says the last baptism was conducted on the island 12 years ago. The boy who received the rite is now about 21.

The fading away of baptism doesn’t seem to worry the Kakure Kirishitan very much. Knowing the traditional orasho chants and belonging to a group that possesses sacred relics are also important indicators of belonging to the faith. They take the idea of belonging very seriously, as the Reuters team — myself, television producer Olivier Fabre and photographer Kiyoshi Ota — discovered when we visited the Christmas Eve service. Entering the room, Toriyama performed some chants and rituals before speaking to us. “Sorry,” he explained — he had to placate the gods first for bringing “heretics” into the church.

Confused about a Christmas Eve service in mid-December? The Kakure Kirishitan celebrate Christmas before the winter solstice, not after.

Where did they get this idea from, the YouTube debates? Al Qaeda’s second-in- command Ayman al-Zawahri will take questions from around the world next month in a video interview. This news got buried a bit in the reporting on his latest video but I asked our correspondent Firouz Sedarat in Dubai for some more information. He says this looks like the first time that Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man will go interactive like this.

As-Sahab, the Al Qaeda online media outlet that broadcasts these videos, has asked its viewers to send in “brief and focused” questions for the elusive Egyptian. “We urge the brothers overseeing the gathering of the questions to pass them on without any changes, be they pro or con, and As-Sahab will do its best to issue the answers by Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahri to these questions as soon as possible,” it said. It gave no further details about the format.

Zawahri himself didn’t mention any Q&A in the 97-minute video, so it’s not clear if he knows about the YouTube debates in his hideout. He talks about both religious and political issues in his videos, although his statements related to security issues usually grab the headlines. Among the religious issues in the latest video was an attack of Saudi King Abdullah for meeting Pope Benedict at the Vatican last month. In an unusually fast reaction, the Vatican responded by saying he seemed afraid of dialogue with other religions.

The TechCrunch blog has been wondering whether Zawahri might follow the YouTube debate format: “Would Al-Qaeda respond to questions submitted by video like the YouTube presidential debates, or should questions be via email only? Who will choose which questions are put forward? Will there be an exit-poll on the responses?”

What do you think of these videos? Are they just Al Qaeda propaganda? Or is it worthwhile to have someone like Zawahri explaining what the group thinks?

Zawahri’s latest video, 17 Dec. 2007

The Roman Catholic Church statement about evangelisation last Friday was one of those classic Vatican documents that are short on news but long on content. We covered it in a news story from Vatican City, but it was not top news that day (”Christians should spread the faith” is not exactly a new message). The document also avoided the blunt tone that sometimes comes out of the Vatican — an angle journalists were watching out for — and dealt with a sensitive issue “softly, softly,” as one theologian put it.

The impact of this document should unfold slowly in the context of the Vatican’s relations with Orthodox churches and with Muslims. It proclaims a duty to spread the Gospel without respect to geographical boundaries. That sounds like a rebuff to the Russian Orthodox argument that Rome should not seek or accept converts in traditionally Orthodox countries. It’s also a challenge to Muslim countries that forbid conversion, to the point of declaring apostasy — i.e. leaving Islam — a crime worthy of the death penalty. Since the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) says it issued the text because of “a certain confusion about whether Catholics should give testimony about their faith in Christ,” this document amounts to a practical guide for dealing with these situations. That’s not news now, but it can well become news at some point ahead if this leads to tensions.

Relations with the Russian Orthodox are sensitive and difficult to read. Metropolitan Kirill, the “foreign minister” of the Russian Church, met Pope Benedict on December 7 and said the session was proof of improving ties. A quick look at the Interfax Religion service seems to hint at a more critical view in Moscow. Kirill seems to take a tougher line back home. The Moscow Patriarchate is also concerned that Opus Dei, which just opened an office in the Russian capital, might proselytise in Russia.

Another question is whether this means the Catholic Church will become more active in its missionary work. The Church is already facing competition from evangelical and Pentecostal missionaries who are winning converts in developing countries, especially in traditionally Catholic countries in Latin America. In Muslim countries like Iraq , it says assertive evangelical missionaries arriving in recent years have upset a long-standing balance the Christian minority had found with the majority population.

Do you think the Catholic Church is right to claim a right and duty to convert people everywhere? Will it become more assertive about it now?

There’s a story unfolding in France that isn’t about religion, but says a lot about the hurdles that residents with a Muslim background here can face. When youths in the poor suburbs complain about discrimination (discussed here in a post about the riots last month), they mention stories like this one to highlight their point.

Bagdad Ghezal, 53, is a community activist who has been the local Socialist Party (PS) section leader for the past six years in the Channel fishing port of Etaples. He recently learned the regional PS leadership wanted to “parachute” in a candidate for the mayor’s race in March. The outsider was a 35-year-old énarque (graduate of the elite ENA school of public administration) with the very aristocratic name of Antoine de Rocquigny du Fayel. He lives in Lille, about 150 km away, but has a summer house in Etaples. Ghezal protested that he was first in line and wanted to run, but the regional leadership refused to consider him.

The Etaples PS section held a primary vote and Ghezal trounced de Rocquigny du Fayel 3-to-1. But the regional leadership annulled the result, saying the loser was “more credible” as a candidate. “Why would de Rocquigny du Fayel, who does not live in Etaples, be better than Bagdad who has been an activist here for the past 10 years?” Ghezal asked (Europe 1 audio in French here). “This is clearly discrimination.”

Socialist Party leaders met in Paris on Saturday to approve lists of candidates for the municipal elections around the country in March. These opposition Socialists would like to turn them into a setback for conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy. They like to say they respect diversité — the politically correct way of referring to promoting candidates of immigrant backgrounds. So the resistance by the Pas-de-Calais regional PS leadership was an embarrassment and the national leadership told the regional barons they must respect the vote of the Etaples local section.

The PS has a problem here, though. It did little to promote minorities to important and visible jobs on the national level when it last held power in Paris. By contrast, Sarkozy has given top-level posts to three women of immigrant origin and has defended them against some rough criticism. They are Justice Minister Rachida Dati and Secretary of State for Urban Policy Fadela Amara (both French-born, of Moroccan and Algerian origin respectively) and Secretary of State for Human Rights Rama Yade (a naturalised citizen born in Senegal).

As it now stands, the regional PS barons are resisting the pressure from the national leadership and going ahead with the candidacy of de Rocquigny du Fayel. As one article put it in its headline, “Being named Bagdad is a handicap.”

Religion plays no part in this story, but Ghezal’s Arab background probably does. Even larger looms the fact that French politics is dominated by a “classe politique” that is notoriously wary of outsiders. Women also suffer from this; France is far behind its European neighbours in the percentage of women in parliament, which women blame on the fact that they — like Bagdad Ghezal — often fail to get nominated by the party barons who control the process. According to the left-wing daily Libération, de Rocquigny du Fayel enjoys solid support form a leading énarque in the regional PS hierarchy.

None of this justifies rioting. None of this says minorities cannot advance in France. But it does go some way towards explaining why many French from minority backgrounds say the cards are stacked against them.

“Now’s the moment to say special prayers, for your family or anyone else you want to pray for,” said my Lebanese companion Ahmed. As he spoke, we caught a first glimpse of the black cloth cover of the Kaaba through the arches of the King Abdul Aziz Gate into the Grand Mosque in Mecca. I tried to remember all the people who had asked for prayers and mentally checked off their names, just in case. We picked our way through the crowds, some in the plain white cloth worn by pilgrims, others in ordinary street wear, according to their status under the complicated rules of the haj pilgrimage.

The overwhelming impression was of dazzling white marble and of arches with white plaster crenellations receding into the distance. The Saudi government has spared no expense in making this mosque, built around the focal point of daily worship for hundreds of millions of Muslims, into a monument inspiring awe and wonder among the millions who visit every year — especially those here for the first time. But the austere simplicity of the Kaaba itself, a plain stone cubic building covered in black cloth and wrapped in Arabic writing in golden silk, makes an even greater impression on visitors. Many raise their arms as it looms into sight from the edge of the inner courtyard, as if to protect themselves from some mysterious power, or perhaps to absorb some of the blessings they think it radiates.

We skipped down the marble steps into the courtyard and made our way towards the Kaaba, joining a crowd of several thousand performing the tawaf ritual – the counter-clockwise circumambulation of the Kaaba, the first part of the umra ceremony which pilgrims usually perform on arrival in Mecca. The tawaf ritual predates Islam, possibly by many hundreds of years, and its origins may be lost in the mists of time. Muslims associate the Kaaba with the prophet Ibrahim, the biblical Abraham, seen as the founder of a pure monotheism which slowly declined until revived in the 7th century by the prophet of Islam.

We shuffled barefoot around the four walls, pressed on all sides by men and women of many colours and languages. Men and women take part together, the men loosely cloaked in a white cloth thrown only over the left shoulder. The women cover their hair but leave their faces bare. Many pilgrims carried prayer books, some picking out the Arabic words with difficulty as they circled. Other read from texts in Urdu and languages in Latin and Cyrillic scripts.

Some came in groups with a leader. The leader would prompt them on each word, which the others shouted out in unison, one word at a time. Many were praying for forgiveness, others simple words of praise for God. Wives and husbands came together, often the man standing behind the woman, holding her shoulders and trying to shield her from the crush. Pilgrims walk around seven times, joining the circle whenever they please and leaving when they are done. The circle has not been broken for years, day in, day out, all night as well, even during Friday prayers. The last interruption may have been in 1979, when rebels took over the mosque, leading to a long and bloody siege.

The first circuit seemed to take an age — actually, about 10 minutes — and I wondered how I would last another six amid the heat and the sweat and the crush. But it became rhythmic, even mildly hypnotic, and the time passed fast. Ahmed and I moved closer to the Kaaba, cutting into the narrow passage between the stone wall and the Station of Abraham, a cylindrical glass and copper case containing a block of stone with the imprint of a foot. A sea of hands reached up to touch the cover of the monument, seeking blessings. Ahmed was not inclined to go closer to the Kaaba, where the crowd was heaviest. Clerics say that in the tawaf it makes no difference how far pilgrims are from the Kaaba, as long as they are within the confines of the sanctuary.

Our tawaf done, we headed for the area behind the Station of Ibrahim for two quick prayers. The area was packed with people clambering over those praying as they moved about the courtyard. In the crush, someone trod on the small bag Ahmed was carrying, breaking his glasses. My mobile phone skidded away across the polished marble, through a forest of bare feet. For a moment I thought it was gone for good, but seconds later I caught a glimpse of it and retrieved it. As at many crowded religious gatherings, pickpockets are active at the haj, taking advantage of people’s preoccupation with their religious duties. The lower part of my white clothes had a small pocket, big enough for a passport and money but not for notebook, telephone and shoes.

We stopped for a cup or two of water from the well of Zamzam, to which many pilgrims attribute miraculous healing powers. The water flows from taps all over the mosque complex and servers ensure steady supplies of disposable plastic cups. The taste was distinctly alkaline. Many pilgrims came with large plastic containers, even of a gallon or more, and filled them to take home as gifts for their friends. A Nigerian pilgrim told me that a recent scientific study proved its miraculous powers

The next major procedure in the umra is the sa’y, a brisk walk between two small hillocks, originally in the open air but now under cover, with powerful fans to cool off the pilgrims. We thought we had started at the wrong end and would have to do eight lengths instead of the prescribed seven. But when we reached the hillock at the other end of the walkway, more than 400 metres away, Ahmed realised that the crowd had confused him. At the end of each length, as they mounted the hillock, pilgrims again raised their hands towards the Kaaba, hardly visible between the pillars of the intervening halls. I noticed with physical pleasure the small marble tiles on the sloped parts, designed for bare toes to grip on as they climb.

Compared to the tawaf, the sa’y was relaxed, but its significance was less obvious. Few pilgrims I met said the sa’y was especially inspiring. The orthodox explanation is that it reenacts a frantic run back and forth by Abraham’s wife Hagar as she sought water for her infant son, and then the miraculous appearance of the Zamzam well to meet their need. Anthropologists have other explanations, rejected by the faithful.

Our sa’y completed, we slipped around the corner where youngsters with small scissors were waiting to clip our hair. They cut about half an inch from five or six spots around our heads, enough to meet the minimal requirement. Later in the week, someone will shave our heads completely. The boys clearly expected a tip for their 20-second task but Ahmed said it wasn’t necessary. Extracting money from your ihram clothing is quite an ordeal.

Ahmed and I parted. He had come to complete the rites, but now I wanted to talk to some of the pilgrims and hear their experiences of what for many of them will be one of the most memorable events in their life. I wandered through the marble halls where families had encamped, spreading rugs and cloths of every colour and design, resting and breathing in the atmosphere of the sanctuary. Old men from India, fakir-like, wiry, bronzed and bearded, lay in their white cloths, half their upper bodies exposed. Egyptian matrons, past the 55-year threshold below which women pilgrims need the company of a male relative, sat cross-legged in groups , reading from the identical Korans which the mosque supplies to anyone who wants to borrow one.

They all looked too preoccupied for conversation so I headed back towards the Kaaba, thinking that perhaps I should take a closer look at the Black Stone, the mysterious possibly meteoric rock, now fragmented, set in the eastern corner of the building. Though the religious authorities disapprove of superstitious or idolatrous activities, they have not been able to persuade some pilgrims, especially simple villagers, that the stone is just a stone, as the Caliph Omar reputedly said.

I slid back into the circling crowd, easing my way slowly towards the wall of the Kaaba as we circled. After close to two circuits, I found myself in reach of the southeastern face of the cube, alongside men pressing themselves again the stone. A space opened and I stepped in, laying the palms of my hands against the wall for just a few seconds. I glanced to the side and saw the faces of my neighbours. One was shedding ecstatic tears, one was kissing the stone, one had taken off his embroidered cap and was rubbing it up and down along the surface of the wall. Down the line, another man had his prayer rug crumpled in his hand like a giant rag and was polishing the Kaaba with it as he chanted.

I moved along the wall towards the stone, half a side away, squeezed in the sea of heaving bodies. As we started to wheel around the corner, just three determined bodies stood between the stone and me. I tried to squeeze in for a closer look but my neighbours were stronger than me and the force of the crowd was more than I could hold back. We all swung around and the stone was gone.

One of the basic rules of journalism is to “be in the right place at the right time.” This is not easy to do when the story you want to cover happens only 10 or 12 times a year, at any one of dozens of locations indoors or outdoors and at any hour of the day or night. The odds were against me massively, but why should I let that get in the way when the story was as interesting as the Jerusalem Syndrome described in my feature “Come to Jerusalem, see the Messiah“?

Only about a dozen Jerusalem tourists per year suddenly get agitated, imagine themselves to be characters from the Bible, fashion makeshift togas out of hotel sheets and go out to holy sites to recite the Psalms, sing hymns or harangue passers-by to repent. There are enough anecdotes around to write a colourful story about the syndrome, but I wanted to get closer to the story. Maybe even see a syndrome sufferer first hand.

The sites that trigger the disorder were my first stop. I began in the narrow streets of the ancient city– a square kilometre crammed with some of the world’s holiest sites for Jews, Muslims and Christians.First I checked out a series of hostels that overlook the Arab market. Most of them had just one big room with guests from around the world spread out in 10 or so bunk beds. In the alley below, tourists haggled with shopkeepers for the best price on a hookah or a set of carved wooden camels.

Every hostel owner knew what I was looking for. Yes, they’d heard about tourists who were overwhelmed by Jerusalem’s intense religious atmosphere. Some had even witnessed a psychotic episode or two over the years. But there had been no crazy tourists recently, they said. They recommended I come back at Christmas or Easter.

A few hundred metres away, outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, an Israeli police officer watched tour groups funnel into the hall believed to hold Jesus’s tomb. In the courtyard out front, Christian tourists walked past a large wooden cross leaning against a stone wall. The Muslim call to prayer echoed through the cobblestone streets. The officer, who asked that I not mention his name, told me that Easter pilgrims carry the cross along the Via Dolorosa, the route Jesus walked to his crucifixion.

The policeman had been stationed at the church for years and seemed to know more about its history than any tour guide. He told me how a few times he had dragged people from the church, those who had “lost their minds” after being overwhelmed by the holiness of the resurrection site.

He spoke with authority about the Jerusalem Syndrome, though much of what he said contradicted the facts and statistics I’d heard from Jerusalem psychiatrists. When I took out my notepad to write down some comments, he abruptly ended our conversation. He pointed me in the direction of the Western Wall and said I might have better luck there.

The march to the Western Wall, a remnant of the ancient Jewish Temple and one of Judaism’s holiest sites, took me through all fours quarters of the walled city - Christian, Muslim, Armenian and Jewish.

I sat in front of the exposed part of the Western Wall– which is about 50 metres (165 feet) long and about 15 metres (50 feet) high—and watched hundreds of worshipers congregate. Tourists pushed tiny prayer notes into the cracks between the stones.

Just last week, the site apparently proved so overwhelming for a young woman in her 20s that she stripped naked and lay on the group, muttering “the holy temple, the holy temple” and “it is all from God” while pointing at the sky. She was later sent to hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.

There was no repeat performance of that event as I sat observing the crowds at the Western Wall that day. I returned to different parts of the Old City several more times, and still never found myself in the right spot at the right time. But spending so much time in this unique conglomeration of holy sites, observing the pilgrims and chatting with the shopkeepers and police who encounter them every day, I understood how the atmosphere and intensity within the city walls could be overwhelming.

Reporters are often accused of “pack journalism” when they essentially write the same story from an event. So what should we call it when they write different reports about the same thing? That happened on Friday when Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams issued his Advent message. This was the long-awaited statement of his views on the crisis tearing away at the Anglican Communion. It turned out to be a grab-bag with something for everyone.

Jim Naughton over at The Lead blog on Episcopal Café noticed the problem and highlighted it in a quick review of the stories about the Advent message. The list shows how the same text can spawn different articles. For example, our story’s lead went for a broad overview, the AP story stressed a U.S. angle and the British papers highlighted details of the Anglican disputes.

“Reporters had their hands full yesterday trying to figure out how to pull a “lede” out of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s letter about the state of the Anglican Communion,” Naughton wrote. “He dumped cold water on everybody, so how to determine which side was wetter?”

Naughton, a veteran journalist who is spokesman for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, added: “One thing I’ve picked up in conversations with reporters is how weary they are of covering this story, and what a difficult time they have in determining the significance of any given event. Many of them fervently wish the story would go away.”

This story is difficult to cover and some journalists might wish it would go away. But there’s no sign it will. The Lambeth Conference, a 10-yearly meeting of Anglican bishops from around the world, is coming up next July. We can probably expect more disputes over openly gay clergy and blessings for same-sex couples, more defections from the Episcopal Church and more warning declarations from the Global South as it approaches. If that weren’t enough, Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, plans to marry his partner only a few weeks before Lambeth begins. “I always wanted to be a June bride,” the University of Miami news service reported him as saying last month.

Do readers want this story to go away? Do they think it will?

Germany has sought to nurture tolerance as a national characteristic since World War Two, but it doesn’t stretch to the Church of Scientology. A new Forsa poll shows 74 percent of Germans think Scientology should be banned. The survey comes hard on the heels of a declaration from federal and regional ministers that the movement is unconstitutional. That announcement, the culmination of a row with Scientology dating back to the 1970s, opens the way for a possible ban.

Germany is not alone in refusing to recognise the Church of Scientology as a religion, but it goes further than many other countries in its rejection of the body. It see Scientology as a cult masquerading as a church to make money, a view Scientologists reject.

Agents of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a kind of German FBI, are already gathering information on Scientology and a whole chapter is devoted to it in the intelligence agency’s 2006 report. It describes the movement as having a “totalitarian character” because it seeks to exert control over its members. But the agency is not sure the government will be able to get enough evidence to ban it.

Scientology, founded in the 1950s by American science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, has up to about 6,000 members in Germany, according to the intelligence report. It is certainly visible in Berlin. It opened a multi-storey headquarters on one of west Berlin’s main streets this year, drawing protesters with banners saying “Brain washing. No, thanks.” Scientology members, many recognisable by their luminous yellow ties, are often out on Berlin streets stopping passers-by to offer personality tests.

Scientologists, whose ranks include Hollywood stars John Travolta and Tom Cruise, insist Scientology is a religion and deny the movement curtails human rights or is undemocratic.

Although Germans, still dogged by their Nazi past, are extremely wary about any infringement of civil rights, they are also fearful of ideologies or movements that can challenge their post-war democracy. Even though they have allowed Scientology to operate in Germany, they have tried to limit its impact. Sensitivities about the issue were laid bare earlier this year when the Defence Ministry banned Tom Cruise from filming “Valkyrie,” the story of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and the attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life, at German military sites. They later lifted the ban.

Critics say Germany can be contradictory when it comes to tolerance. While Germans want to ban Scientology, they still allow far-right parties — including the National Democratic Party (NPD) which comes within a whisker of espousing some Nazi ideas — to operate and sometimes get some public funding.

Do you think Germany should recognise Scientology as a religion? Leave it alone? Or should it actually be less tolerant, towards Scientology and other groups it sees as potential threats to its democracy?

Obituaries on TV? Satellite broadcasts of cemetery visits? It may sound morbid, but a German television producer plans to launch a satellite TV channel dedicated to obituary videocasts, features on famous graveyards and practical advice for those nearing death. And he thinks he’s got a huge target audience that can only get bigger in coming years.

Etos TV had planned a launch this year but put it back to early 2008 because of all the interest shown in the project in Germany and abroad, its founder Wolf Tilmann Schneider told the German media magazine DWDL.de. That will give it time to integrate suggestions from new business partners, he said. “Every country has a different (funeral) culture, but all have the same problem — the decline of this culture,” he said.

“There are 485,000 obituaries published in (German) newspapers every year, but there’s nothing about the people in them,” Schneider told the Financial Times Deutschland. “With our service, people will be able to contribute obituaries for anyone who dies, with pictures and texts that are professionally produced.”

Schneider says the channel, which is backed by the German Funeral Trade Publishing House, won’t show actual burials. It plans three main features — obituary videocasts, reports on cemeteries and advice services. “People are interested in cemeteries, they go strolling there on Sundays or go visit them on vacation,” he explained. “Just think about famous graveyards like Montmartre in Paris or the one in Hamburg-Ohlsdorf.”

The website of Etos TV — etos means “year” in Greek — has three “demo obits” to show just how these videocasts could look. Backed by tastefully melancholy piano music, one commemorates “the best grandma children could ever want,” another tells a friend “you had to leave us too early” and a third pays tribute to a respected colleague (”your company was your second home”). Pictures of the deceased and loved ones blend into shots of sunsets, mountains and clouds. God is mentioned only in one, but users would be free to express religious views as they wish.

Schneider has clearly done his market research. “Our target audience is simply anyone over 50 — one doesn’t normally die at this age, but one asks questions that weren’t there before,” he said. “Our channel’s target audience is gigantic and is getting ever larger thanks to demographic changes. We already have more than two million people in long-term care and by 2010 it will be three million. If every one of them has four relatives, we’re over 10 million people!”

Funeral practices have certainly changed in recent decades, with mixed results. What do you think about putting a person’s obituary on satellite TV? Have people lost respect for the dead? Or is this simply a modern — and maybe better — way to celebrate someone’s life?

Science and religion are sometimes portrayed as adversaries, especially by the “new atheists“, but the real picture has always been more complex. The latest breakthrough in stem cell research shows how quickly opposing sides can become allies. On Nov. 20, two research teams announced they had transformed ordinary skin cells into stem cells without destroying human embryos in the process. That meant that scientists could solve an ethical dilemma they had effectively created when they began using human embryos to produce stem cells.

Religious groups critical of embryonic stem cell research immediately hailed the breakthrough as an advance that opened the door to ethnical use of these potential wonder cells. They have now begun to use it as a welcome argument to bolster their positions in disputes on the issue. This must be happening in quite a few places, but here are two examples that show how science is helping religion in this case.

In Germany, the Roman Catholic Church has severely criticised the governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party for agreeing to loosen tight restrictions on embryonic stem cell research there. The law bars German scientists from working on stem cell lines developed after January 1, 2002. Researchers say this is hampering their work and want the cut-off date to be moved up to 2007.

When the CDU agreed to this last week, two outspoken Catholic cardinals, Joachim Meisner of Cologne and Karl Lehmann of Mainz, condemned this as a betrayal of the Christian principles the party’s name claimed to represent. Meisner was especially critical of Research Minister Annette Schavan, a Catholic. He said the CDU decision was baffling, coming as it did “when science is opening up perspectives that present no ethical problems.”

Lehmann issued a statement as head of the German Bishops’ Conference: “The notable new successes in adult stem cell research and the reprogramming of cells are an additional argument against expanding embryonic stem cell research … so we call for a significant restructuring of European and German research funding from embryonic to adult stem cell research.”

In Belgium, the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) thinks the breakthrough will help it keep its official Catholic status endangered by its stem cell research. The Vatican has been quietly investigating the university’s fertility centre, which does embryonic stem cell research that is firmly opposed by Catholic teaching. The university, with the support of Brussels Cardinal Godfried Danneels, has been arguing it needed to continue that work until research into adult stem cells — which it also does — finds an ethical way to produce them. No steps have been taken, but no compromise seemed possible. If the Vatican stripped KUL of its Catholic status, it could lose many Catholic students who study theology there.

“This reduces the bones of contention with Rome,” said KUL Vice-rector Mark Waer. “If these insights are confirmed, at some point it shouldn’t be necessary anymore to experiment with embryos.”

Cardinal Danneels agreed: “This is joyous news that can bring a turnaround on an important ethical question, the manipulation of the embryo. I’m very happy about this.” He also told the weekly Tertio that he always thought “the embryo problem might solve itself. Hasn’t Leuven been working all this time researching how equally good results could be reached with adult stem cells?”

There have been articles reporting that Asian laboratories had an advantage over those in countries with Christian traditions because Eastern religions had fewer qualms about using human embryos. The New York Times had a feature on Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, one of the researchers pioneering the new technique. He gave no religious or philosophical reason for wanting to avoid destroying human embryos and simply said his scientific career changed when he saw a human embryo through a microscope: “When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realised there was such a small difference between it and my daughters … I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.”